You stop chasing status updates by making status visible without asking: every piece of work has one owner and one deadline in one shared place, updates happen where the work happens, and a short summary comes to you instead of you going to everyone. Chasing is a symptom. The cause is that status lives in people's heads instead of in a system.

Why you end up chasing

If you lead a team, this probably sounds familiar: "Any news on the client deck?" in the morning, "Where are we with the launch?" after lunch, and a status meeting on Monday that mostly repeats what people could have written down.

You are not alone. Asana counts "chasing the status of work" as part of what it calls work about work, together with searching for information, switching between apps and managing shifting priorities (Asana, 2026). In its 2022 survey of 10,624 knowledge workers, people spent 58% of their workday on this kind of coordination, and managers spent the most of any role, at 62% (Asana Anatomy of Work Index, 2022). Every "any update?" message also adds to the noise: Microsoft's telemetry shows that people using Microsoft 365 are interrupted by a meeting, email or notification every 2 minutes during core hours (Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2025).

Chasing usually comes from one of four gaps:

No single owner. Three people are "on it", so nobody feels responsible for reporting.
No visible deadline. If the date only exists in your head, nobody knows it is close.
Status lives in chat. The update exists, but it is buried in a thread you didn't read.
Updating costs effort. If reporting means opening a separate tool and writing a paragraph, people skip it.

Fix those four, and most of the chasing disappears.

Step 1: One owner and one date for every piece of work

Go through what your team is working on and make sure each item has exactly one owner and one due date. Not "marketing", but a name. Not "soon", but a date.

This alone changes the question from "What's the status?" to "Is anything late?", and that second question can be answered by looking.

Step 2: Put all work in one shared place

Pick one place where all tasks live, visible to the whole team. It does not matter much which tool, as long as:

everyone can see everyone's work,
status is a simple field (not started, in progress, blocked, done),
it shows what is late or due soon without anyone building a report.

Scattered tracking is common. In Atlassian's 2024 survey of 5,000 knowledge workers, 56% said teams at their company plan and track work in different ways, which makes working together harder (Atlassian State of Teams, 2024). If half the work is in a project tool and the other half is in chat messages, you will keep chasing the half you can't see.

Step 3: Make updating cheaper than being asked

People update when it is faster than answering you. Keep it small:

Changing a status should take one click.
A short comment on the task beats a long message in a channel.
"Blocked" should always come with one sentence: blocked by what or whom.

Agree on one simple rule with your team: if your work is late or blocked, you say so on the task before someone asks.

Step 4: Replace status meetings with a written summary

Instead of going around the room, read a short written summary: what moved, what is late, what is blocked, and what needs your decision. Keep the meeting time for the blocked items and the decisions.

There is good reason to cut the reporting part of meetings. In Microsoft's 2023 survey, people ranked inefficient meetings as the number one obstacle to their productivity, and 80% said they wanted AI to summarize meetings and action items (Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2023). For more on this, see How to Get Project Updates Without Status Meetings.

You can write this summary yourself from the shared task list in about ten minutes a day. Or you can let software write it.

Step 5: Let the system follow up, not you

The last bit of chasing is reminders: "The deadline is Friday, are we on track?" That is exactly the kind of message that should not need a person.

Many tools can send automatic reminders before a deadline. Newer AI tools go further: they notice when a task has no owner, when it has not moved for days or when someone is blocked, and ask the right person directly. You only hear about it when a decision is needed. AI Tool That Follows Up on Tasks Automatically explains how this works in practice.

A simple weekly routine

When	What	Time
Monday	Check every active task has an owner and a date	15 min
Daily	Read the written summary, act on blocked items	10 min
Friday	Look at what slipped and why	15 min

That is about an hour a week, instead of an hour a day spent asking.

How Orakis does it

Orakis was built for exactly this. Goals and tasks have owners, statuses and deadlines in one workspace. Every morning you get a written briefing of what moved, who is waiting on you and what is already handled. The AI follows up on its own: it offers unassigned tasks to the right person, tells people when they can start, and brings late or blocked work to whoever needs to act. Follow-ups are suggestions a person confirms, and Orakis keeps itself quiet with at most three new cards per person per day. Orakis is a young product in closed beta.

FAQ

Will my team feel watched? Not if the rule is the same for everyone, including you. Visible work removes the "any news?" messages, which most people find more annoying than a status field.

What if people don't update their tasks? Make it cheaper: one click for status, and a summary that shows whose tasks have not moved. Peer visibility does most of the work.

Do we still need a weekly meeting? Keep a short one for decisions and blockers. Drop the part where everyone reports status out loud.

How to Stop Chasing Status Updates From Your Team